So! This week is finally there. The fulltime progression week.
Not particularly a 9-5 schedule as it is more of a 9-10 one, but the first full day has finally set production into motion again.

My goal for today was to finish the E deck corridors. I made a little misjudgment on the amount of time I had to spend on the doors and fixing the connecting areas, but I made good progress.

This render, I forgot to turn on the ambient lighting, which surpisingly gave an interesting result.

Although I did not finish all corridors of E deck, one big milestone has been reached. For the first time ever in this mod's development, the Grand Staircase has been fully fitted and optimized from top to bottom, meaning I am finally done with this area! Which I consider one of the hardest ones since it runs through so many decks without a single matching blueprint to use for reference.

As you can see on the renders, the starboard part is nearing completion. I divided this deck into 4 sections; fore, aft, port and starboard, the latter requiring most work due to the many side corridors and the sheer number of doors, which all needed to be positioned manually because of the deck's curvature.

Tomorrow I'll add the details to the starboard section and continue on the rest of the doors. Fortunately, the woodwork in 3rd class doesn't need that much work compared to the other areas, and Scotland Road has no corridors protruding outward.

I've been following this mod for several years. You, Mr. Robville, are simply one of the greatest modders I've ever seen in all my years of gaming. You've pretty much managed to milk the LS3D engine beyond to almost the passing level of Unity or Unreal Engine! It just amazed me over the years how you never gave up, you always kept going with this mod, and I've had numerous frustrations with making things in Unity so I can't imagine how difficult making this mod must've been over the past 10 years. 2K Czech or at least Daniel Vavra must see this technical beauty because, you sir are an artist, and I wish you all the luck in the world. Though I doubt you need luck, because I know you can do this!.

If it helps I showed your Titanic mod on Steam's Mafia 2 forums and asked to give their support to you. Love the glow in the dark effect there by the way!

Last edited by AMadeMan on Tue Jun 20, 2017 10:26 pm; edited 1 time in total

Thanks a lot guys. I truly appreciate the continuous support you've given me through the years.

15 years, damn. Although I hope not, it wouldn't surprise me if the mod reached that anniversary as well. It's unfortunate that I cannot upkeep the same pace like I could during college. However, I'm not planning on calling it quits.
The last period was rather quiet due to vacation, which also took a lot of preparation as well as some aftercare since everything is documented for public and has to be edited as such. Luckily that process doesn't take too long.

About the photobucket issue. I might replace some images on the main page, but I cannot go past every page to correct the URL's since it is simply too much work. I can invest that time into better things.
I've posted so much content over so many forums throughout the years, I cannot even begin to imagine how much time it would take to fix that. They're thousands of posts, without exaggerating.

Moving to a different host like Imgur is only a temporary solution regardless, since it is simply a matter of time before some bigshot company buys them and starts monetizing everything. It seems that's the natural way of progressing for every image host.

You know what, after the mod is done, I'll try to see if I can write a little book with the best development screenshots. Either available for free in PDF or for a few bucks in a hardcopy, should there be any interest. This way the important progress shall remain documented forever and independently. I still feel bothered sometimes that all of the original pages of this topic from the old MS.com were deleted. I always enjoyed reading a few pages and seeing how this mod grew from some simple idea to what it is now. I have a good memory though, so I could recap a lot. _________________

Thanks a lot guys. I truly appreciate the continuous support you've given me through the years.

15 years, damn. Although I hope not, it wouldn't surprise me if the mod reached that anniversary as well. It's unfortunate that I cannot upkeep the same pace like I could during college. However, I'm not planning on calling it quits.
The last period was rather quiet due to vacation, which also took a lot of preparation as well as some aftercare since everything is documented for public and has to be edited as such. Luckily that process doesn't take too long.

About the photobucket issue. I might replace some images on the main page, but I cannot go past every page to correct the URL's since it is simply too much work. I can invest that time into better things.
I've posted so much content over so many forums throughout the years, I cannot even begin to imagine how much time it would take to fix that. They're thousands of posts, without exaggerating.

Moving to a different host like Imgur is only a temporary solution regardless, since it is simply a matter of time before some bigshot company buys them and starts monetizing everything. It seems that's the natural way of progressing for every image host.

You know what, after the mod is done, I'll try to see if I can write a little book with the best development screenshots. Either available for free in PDF or for a few bucks in a hardcopy, should there be any interest. This way the important progress shall remain documented forever and independently. I still feel bothered sometimes that all of the original pages of this topic from the old MS.com were deleted. I always enjoyed reading a few pages and seeing how this mod grew from some simple idea to what it is now. I have a good memory though, so I could recap a lot.

I think there's a batch script of sorts to scrape all image URLs, save them, and mirror them some place else, but yeah as you said, there's the possibility that some corporate bigwig would gobble up imgur and thus ruin things for the community.

Also, have you considered posting stuff about this on the Encyclopedia Titanica forums? Haven't seen much on the video games section there apart from Adventure Out of Time or Honor and Glory.

It might be possible to recover a page of the Titanic mod from the old MS site. I remember seeing that sometime ago you guys found one of the thousands of pages from the old MS site.
Though it seems doubtful since there are thousands and thousands of posts and pages. It would be an awesome find though.

If we don't find anything, we can just look to your youtube channel to see how it evolved over the years.

It would be a dream come true if the mod could be ported into Mafia 2. It seems impossible due to the Illusion engine's encrypted code, but recently we've discovered a way to port skins from Mafia 1 into 2 so we're getting closer to cracking the code.

I've once scoured Wayback Machine of the WebArchive, and was able to recover 2 or 3 pages of the old mod topic, purely because they were mentioned in the last 20 posts scroller. It felt quite nostalgic. Obviously the layout of the website was quite butchered and not all images worked, but the posts were readable.
If I ever get the chance to find all hundred pages (I recall the topic had quite a few), I'd download the living hell out of it and store everything locally.

As that remains doubtful, we do indeed have my YouTube channel as a nice testament of progression.

Although I'd love to port the mod to many other games, I'll be quite done with the Titanic thing after this project has completed, and will just leave any porting to whoever feels like doing it.

I've never really looked into Encyclopedia Titanica before, since I figured this project missed its potential within the Titanic community due to better alternatives and the Mafia subject, which some people take as rather offensive, I found. But I guess I could leave a post there sometime, who knows. Maybe they'll like it. The forum seems actively browsed._________________

I've once scoured Wayback Machine of the WebArchive, and was able to recover 2 or 3 pages of the old mod topic, purely because they were mentioned in the last 20 posts scroller. It felt quite nostalgic. Obviously the layout of the website was quite butchered and not all images worked, but the posts were readable.
If I ever get the chance to find all hundred pages (I recall the topic had quite a few), I'd download the living hell out of it and store everything locally.

As that remains doubtful, we do indeed have my YouTube channel as a nice testament of progression.

Although I'd love to port the mod to many other games, I'll be quite done with the Titanic thing after this project has completed, and will just leave any porting to whoever feels like doing it.

I've never really looked into Encyclopedia Titanica before, since I figured this project missed its potential within the Titanic community due to better alternatives and the Mafia subject, which some people take as rather offensive, I found. But I guess I could leave a post there sometime, who knows. Maybe they'll like it. The forum seems actively browsed.

I've seen one dude post progress of his GTA mod on the site, yet no one seems to have taken umbrage on the idea of putting the Titanic on a game which involves murder and M-rated stuff.

Have you considered posting the project files on Github once it is done? I'm not sure on what to do with the ship once you make it public, but I may have some rather silly ideas or other experiments (SFM, as a building in GTA San Andreas, etc.) to do with the model.

On a side note I have been thinking about modeling Charles Lightoller's personal yacht Sundowner, but idk if the deck plans for her are publicly available, and I can't just "play it by ear" since I would like to focus on accuracy as much as possible.

I'm still on the fence on what to do with the files. Thing is, these models are a goldmine regarding asset value and I have incredible fear that as soon as I release this mod, people rip the models and sell them for god knows how much money. Already in the past I've encountered people doing this with even only a few textures or smaller projects that I made. I can bet all my money on it that they are waiting in line for this mod to release just to steal it.

I've already discussed file encryption with djbozkosz to prevent the low level scum from stealing anything. You cannot prevent it fully, but most people drop their cause as soon as there is effort required.

The models will be fully watermarked though, but that's no bulletproof method, so I guess I might have to publicly sell the model simultaneously when the mod releases just so that I have legal grounds to sue any offender.

Unfortunately such high protection measures go completely against the availability for other modders to port the mod to a different game, which I'm completely fine with as long as it is done for free and proper credit is given. Not only does it become harder for them, any encryption I've thought off is useless as soon as the mod appears within a different game with no encryption whatsoever.

One advantage though, contrary to Kyle's Virtual Sailor Titanic model that has been used in many mods including the famous GTA V mod, my ship and its interiors consist out of hundreds, if not thousands of separate models. So there is no quick conversion possible to perform. If one were to load everything into a modelling tool all at once, the software would crash.

I'm still on the fence on what to do with the files. Thing is, these models are a goldmine regarding asset value and I have incredible fear that as soon as I release this mod, people rip the models and sell them for god knows how much money. Already in the past I've encountered people doing this with even only a few textures or smaller projects that I made. I can bet all my money on it that they are waiting in line for this mod to release just to steal it.

I've already discussed file encryption with djbozkosz to prevent the low level scum from stealing anything. You cannot prevent it fully, but most people drop their cause as soon as there is effort required.

The models will be fully watermarked though, but that's no bulletproof method, so I guess I might have to publicly sell the model simultaneously when the mod releases just so that I have legal grounds to sue any offender.

Unfortunately such high protection measures go completely against the availability for other modders to port the mod to a different game, which I'm completely fine with as long as it is done for free and proper credit is given. Not only does it become harder for them, any encryption I've thought off is useless as soon as the mod appears within a different game with no encryption whatsoever.

One advantage though, contrary to Kyle's Virtual Sailor Titanic model that has been used in many mods including the famous GTA V mod, my ship and its interiors consist out of hundreds, if not thousands of separate models. So there is no quick conversion possible to perform. If one were to load everything into a modelling tool all at once, the software would crash.

We'll see.

I can feel you real good on that, mate. A number of mods on GTAForums and elsewhere were nothing more than so-called mod-packs from wannabes and kids from developing countries who should know better. I don't mind my mods being shared for free as long as I am duly credited and such, but for those that are "hot" commodities such as this, 'tis hard to justify making this as open content considering those poseurs out there.

Selling it as a form of a copyright trap could also work too. You planning to market it on Turbosquid or something?

I think it's actually good that this project hasn't shown very much as the guys from Titanic Honor and Glory found another set of "devs" stealing their work as those guys' Titanic Unimersiv VR stole all their textures, models, rooms, and everything else while saying they did no such thing and made everything themselves.

Those who hold very valuable work must be careful as anyone can try to steal it. And those who steal at all from any game developers should be shunned. Because it must be both painful and time consuming to make even a good model or texture.
Your work Mr. Rob is I believe more valuable than gold, because it's the amount of love and care that you put into making it that will probably make people want to steal it more.

Last edited by AMadeMan on Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:48 pm; edited 1 time in total